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Civil Aviation Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, whose point reinforces my argument. I agree that it spreads it wider. On Third Reading of the Bill in another place on 10 October, the junior Minister Karen Buck said, as my noble friend did today, that the Government had decided not to accept the CAA’s advice, and that the public should have the right to decide whether or not to buy insurance to protect themselves financially. The Minister said that an across-the-board levy of £1 was ““disproportionate””. I urge my noble friend to reconsider the matter. Members of the public who buy holiday packages already pay for their protection. They have no choice because the tour operators are obliged to include such cover in their holiday prices. The Government said that it would help consumers to learn more about air travel insurance, but they seem to have overlooked the fact that such insurance costs a lot more than £1. In addition, that insurance does not arrange repatriation for those who are stranded abroad. The most recent airline to go bust is EU Jet, to which my noble friend referred, which used to fly out of Manston in Kent. It collapsed in July at the height of the holiday season, leaving 12,000 tourists abroad and another 27,000 people waiting to travel. The CAA in its report of the collapse said:"““If a managed scheme with a central administrator was in place, repatriation could have been arranged more cheaply, at no cost to passengers, and they would have been able to travel as intended with little or no disruption to their holiday and therefore less anxiety. Passengers yet to travel would also receive a refund irrespective of whether they paid by credit card or debit card””." EU Jet was one of 18 scheduled airlines in Europe that have collapsed in the past four years. It will not be the last because there is still overcapacity in the airline market. More consumers who believed themselves to be protected will have their holidays ruined when more airlines collapse, and they will incur costs that they have not budgeted for. I hope that we can come back to the subject in Committee, and that even if the £1 levy is not acceptable to the Government, we can consider an alternative way of providing the same sort of protection to customers as the tour operators. I hope that we will have the chance to discuss those matters, and the matter to which the noble Countess, Lady Mar, referred to. I look forward to the later stages of the Bill.